Back in January, Kyle Long finally got his first taste of the NFL playoffs. At the end of his sixth season with the Bears, after 73 games played and 23 games missed, after a whirlwind of surgeries — ankle, neck, shoulder, elbow — and three trips to injured reserve, Long returned from a serious right foot injury and started the NFC divisional-round game against the Eagles.

Man, what a feeling. Finally.

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Nearly five months later, the veteran guard reflects on that 16-15 loss with an appropriate blend of gratitude and bitterness.

“It was kind of like sitting down at a really nice restaurant, tasting the Acqua Panna water and then getting kicked out because you’ve got the wrong T-shirt on,” Long said.

It’s easy to argue that no one on the Bears roster has the perspective and appreciation Long carries regarding the struggle that went into turning a last-place laughingstock into a legitimate Super Bowl contender. But Long also knows the Bears’ current climb requires a microfocus on each day’s work.

That’s why it’s easy for him to shift from big-picture reflection and robotically detail his individual progress during this spring’s organized team activities.

“You don’t have to make monumental increases in skill or technique every day,” Long said after practice last week. “You just have to do a little bit every day to move the needle in a positive direction.”

This has been a different kind of offseason for Long. For one thing, he’s fully healthy, a rarity over the past several springs.

That comes with perks, of course. Rather than spending all his time in the Halas Hall training room, Long instead vacationed in Oahu for about 10 days, happy to relax and recharge and even happier to let the Hawaiian natives know that, yes, indeed, he does know Olin Kreutz.

“When somebody (there) finds out you’re on the Bears, all they want to talk about is Olin,” Long said. “Which is beautiful.”

Long sees the group of players around him as not only more talented than some of the struggling teams he played with, but also wired with a win-first mentality that’s evident in their unselfishness and constant drive. That’s one reason Long let this offseason’s biggest personal setback — the pay cut the Bears front office asked him to take in February — roll off his back rather quickly.

Without question, his pride took a hit. “Anytime someone’s ripping a check out of your book, it’s no fun,” Long said.

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But he reminded himself to zoom out and see the bigger picture, confident the Bears could use his contract restructuring to further invest in the team. Long had a sincere desire to continue his career with the Bears and appreciated the respectful manner in which the front office made its request/demand.

“It was in the best of both of our interests to be able to secure my future here and secure some extra finances for things they needed to handle,” Long said. “It’s no secret there’s a lot of money in the NFL. We all make a lot of money, and I like to help where I can.

“I’m comfortable. So it wasn’t something I need to be greedy about.”

Heading into his seventh season, Long knows there’s far more sand piled up in the bottom of his hourglass than there is up top. When his brother Chris, four years his senior, recently announced his retirement from the NFL, the Long family reality became impossible to ignore.

“I’m the last one left,” Long said. “The last of a long line. I was talking with my dad (Hall of Famer Howie Long) the other day, and he said: ‘You’re the last one left, man. Leave a lasting impression.’ That’s what I intend to do.”

For now, that means setting a tone at OTAs. That hasn’t gone unnoticed by teammates.

“It’s just his presence out here,” quarterback Mitch Trubisky said. “It automatically raises the tempo and energy everyone brings. Everyone wants to go harder when Kyle’s on the field. It’s the intensity he brings, the focus and how badly he wants this team to win.

“It’s every single drill, every single snap. He’s bringing it and helping guys get locked in.”

Naturally, Long has his eyes on getting back to that exclusive table with the fancy white tablecloth and the bottle of Acqua Panna.

“I want to go back to that nice restaurant,” he said. “And I want to wear the right shirt. You want to be prepared. … Hopefully we’ll be able to earn our way to some nice reservations this year and I’ll get to enjoy the meal.”

According to Adam

For six seasons as head coach of the Colts, Bears defensive coordinator Chuck Pagano never faced the sleep-depriving worry now stuck inside Matt Nagy’s head.

Where in the world can we find a reliable kicker?

Pagano had the best to ever do it at his service in Indianapolis. Adam Vinatieri — a four-time Super Bowl winner, the league’s all-time leading scorer and a shoo-in for the Pro Football Hall of Fame — never missed a game while playing for Pagano.

Vinatieri made 87.8 percent of his field-goal attempts over those six seasons (2012-17) and provided Pagano with ample security.

“Comfort,” Pagano said. “You sleep well at night when you have Adam at the helm. He’s the greatest of all time. That’s a good feeling.”

He paused.

“We’ll get there.”

The Bears are trying to get there, but at this point, it’s hard to know how well their GPS is working. As the last week of OTAs begins at Halas Hall, the kicker competition among Eddy Pineiro, Elliott Fry and Chris Blewitt has become a patience-testing battle featuring three guys who have never kicked in an NFL game.

For what it’s worth, before Adam Vinatieri was Adam Vinatieri, he, too, was just a hard-working kicker fighting for a chance. Vinatieri went undrafted out of Division I-AA South Dakota State in 1996 and got his pro football start with the Amsterdam Admirals in the World League of American Football.

So, yes, to some extent, Vinatieri can relate to the prove-it mentality of Pineiro, Fry and Blewitt. He knows what it’s like to be a relative nobody just trying to get a foot in the door.

“I took a roundabout way to get in,” Vinatieri told the Tribune recently. “Like most kickers do. Unless you’re a highly drafted guy like a (Sebastian) Janikowski, that’s just what you have to do. I went halfway around the world.”

Immediately after his season in Amsterdam ended, Vinatieri got a contract from the Patriots. He went to training camp with two other rookies, all of them, he said, essentially competing to take kickoff duties off veteran Matt Bahr’s plate.

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But Vinatieri made the most of his field-goal opportunities, earned Bill Parcells’ confidence through the preseason and landed his big break.

“You have to work your butt off,” he said. “I guess for me, consistency was the key. Once you get a chance at it, prove why you should be there. And don’t ever give them another opportunity to look anywhere else.”

Vinatieri’s rags-to-riches story is hardly unique for NFL kickers. The Bears’ all-time leading scorer, Robbie Gould, went undrafted in 2005, was cut by the Patriots in the preseason and got his opportunity in Chicago after a back injury sidelined Doug Brien.

Last season’s Pro Bowl kickers, the Giants’ Aldrick Rosas and the Jets’ Jason Myers (now with the Seahawks), also were undrafted out of Southern Oregon and Marist, respectively. Saints standout Wil Lutz joined the Ravens as a college free agent in 2016 out of Georgia State.

“Honestly,” Vinatieri said, “it’s a different beast. As kickers, it’s not a one-on-one deal. For a receiver, you can say, ‘I played at an SEC school and I went against other (first-team guys) in the SEC.’ Now put that versus guys from small schools who are going to be compared against the competition they went against. In that case, it might not be the same.

“Well, a 50-yard field goal is a 50-yard field goal, no matter if it was done in South Dakota or Florida or Texas or anywhere else. So some of the guys who are successful come from smaller schools, maybe with rough weather and field conditions that aren’t as good, and they learn how to deal with adverse conditions. And when they get in the league, they’ve already got a good head on their shoulders.”

As fate would have it, Vinatieri was in his 10th season with the Patriots in 2005 when a confident kicker out of Penn State joined him on the practice field. Before Robbie Gould was Robbie Gould, he was just a training camp leg with the Patriots, a hopeful 22-year-old clawing for an opportunity.

“You can tell,” he said. “You see a guy like that come in and you go: ‘Whoa. This guy’s really good. If he doesn’t make it here, he’s going to make it somewhere.’

“Robbie was one of those guys. … He was very polished as a young kid. There are a lot of young guys who come in and you can see they’re not quite there yet. Form and technique-wise. Or sometimes mentally maybe. But Robbie was spot on. He had it going on in that regard.”

Not that Vinatieri is actively rooting for more underdog fairy tales to come true. Not yet anyway.

“Every one of these guys is fighting to take one of 32 positions in the league,” Vinatieri said. “They’re trying to take my job too. So I don’t lose too much sleep (empathizing with them). I need to work on my own craft and stay in this as long as I can. After that, then maybe it’ll be a different situation.

“Look, I can sympathize and empathize when guys are lining up for a big kick. And if it doesn’t go the right way, I know how that feels. I’ve been there before. So I can sympathize with that a little bit. But I definitely don’t want to think about any of these guys taking my job away from me. That’s for sure.”

Vinatieri remains safe in Indianapolis, where the Colts still enjoy that comfort Pagano remembers so fondly. But the kicking predicament at Halas Hall is far from the comfort zone. And it’s difficult to know whether general manager Ryan Pace’s needle-in-a-haystack mission will have a promising result.

‘Bet you a hundred bucks’

While kicker frustration may be more pronounced than ever in Chicago, it’s certainly not a new plight for the Bears.

Mannelly vividly recalled the moment before the Bears edged the Chargers 23-20 in 1999 on a 36-yard overtime field goal by Chris Boniol at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. As the field-goal unit came on the field for that decisive kick, Mannelly was flanked by two giants: 6-foot-7, 330-pound Big Cat Williams and 6-4, 295-pound Blake Brockermeyer.

“Blake wasn’t joking,” Mannelly said. “He was just one of those guys. He was so aggravated by kickers missing kicks. The offense would work to get us in position to score and a kicker would miss. Or they couldn’t make five in a row in practice. I just remember getting ready for that snap and thinking, ‘He just bet a hundred bucks that our own kicker is going to miss.’ ”